kaya publishes books of the asian pacific diaspora

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Premonitions

The most comprehensive anthology of Asian North American poetry to date, Premonitions gathers work-ranging from cyberpunk meditations and Buddhist odes to L=A=N=G=U=A=G=E-influenced and neo-Orientalist writing–and juxtaposes them in ways that both echo and subvert categories of theme, poetics, and identity. Video and multimedia texts, pidgin poetry, queer writing, and Canadian open-field compositions further broaden the scope of this ground-breaking collection. The 73 contributors include veteran authors like Jessica Hagedorn, Lawson Fusao Inada, Trinh T. Minh-ha, Fred Wah, Kimiko Hahn, Arthur Sze, and John Yau, as well as such “premonitory” new poets as R. Zamora Linmark, Barry Masuda, Evelyn Lau, Amitava Kumar, and an emerging generation of Vietnamese and Korean American poets. Also featured are previously unpublished poems by the late Frances Chung, Roy Kiyooka, and Theresa Hak Kyung Cha.

praise

“Demonstrating the infinite range of possibilities overlooked by the too easily applied label of ‘multicultural’, this collection steeps the reader in alternative histories and approaches to language and tells stories seldom—if ever—heard. Recommended for most poetry collections.”
— Library Journal

“An exquisite artifact of activist experimentalism, theoretically smart and so beautiful it hurts, Premonitions promises to be a landmark in American letters for many years to come.”
— Maria Damon, University of Minnesota

“An impressive collection distinguished by its variety and sweep. By turns entertaining, exciting, troubling, it is always provocative. A major contribution.”
— David Palumbo-Liu, Stanford University

“Up to recently, Asian American literary anthologies have served to canonize authors, works, tastes, and ideas. Premonitions is different. From conception to layout, it explodes impulses to map centers and margins of Asian American poetry. Premonitions gives us a brilliant variety of poetry and poets who together show, we are all this and more.”
— Stephen Sumida, University of Washington